Director Michael Sarnoski Brings the Soulfulness of ‘Pig’ into ‘A Quiet Place: Day One’
The new prequel has a bigger canvas but emphasizes small moments of human connection.
Writer-director Michael Sarnoski keeps making movies that aren’t what the marketing implies. His breakthrough feature, Pig, seemed like a Nicolas Cage romp of a man going John Wick to get back his truffle pig. Instead, Cage delivered one of the best performances of his career as a quiet hermit who emphasizes the need to pursue that which in life is truly important. Sarnoski’s new movie, A Quiet Place: Day One, makes it look like we’re going to see an action blockbuster but with the sound-sensitive Quiet Place aliens rampaging through New York City. That certainly happens, but Sarnoski shows yet again how he’s more concerned not with using silence to create a scare, but as a point of emotional intimacy and unexpected personal revelation.
The story follows Sam (Lupita Nyong’o), a woman in hospice care who came to New York City with her fellow patients to see a show when the aliens attack. Sam and the other characters quickly learn that the aliens are hypersensitive to sound, so they endeavor to stay quiet. Since Sam knows she’s already dying, her goal isn’t to escape New York City, but instead get a slice from her favorite pizza place, which she notes, “may be the last slice of pizza in the world.” While moving through the city, she crosses paths with Eric (Joseph Quinn), a terrified law student who depends on Sam for strength, and she comes to see that she could probably use a little help as well.
Rather than simply resetting the action from the rural setting of the first two movies into a major city, Day One also strips away the protections of the Abbott family. No one here knows sign language. There is no warning system of red lights. If the first two movies were about a family that had found a way to live in this post-apocalypse, Day One is more of a straight survival tale where the characters need to think on their feet about how they’ll diminish or cover up any sound they might make. That’s a clever little twist, and it gives Day One a different feeling than its predecessors.
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